tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12989029810819454102024-03-13T23:18:59.893-07:00chimes of a forgotten melodyAnand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.comBlogger161125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-58579092406850002372020-05-01T11:55:00.001-07:002020-05-01T12:36:05.114-07:00Listening Ears at Sikkim<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Turning back the pages of my travels after passing through innumerable days of solitude and a myriad of bitter emotions is very often a moving experience. As I write these words, I find myself filled with excessive hope and imagine myself tasting the salts and sweats of days ahead.<br />
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My Northeastern odyssey made immediately after college with my friend Nijil, may well be a towering personal moment which I can never possibly recreate. Looking back on it always leaves me with pulsating nerves filled with yearning and passion. The journey began on a hot June evening at Thalassery Railway station and extended into early August, ending at Ernakulam Railway station (after an 80-hour train journey back from Guwahati). A single chapter will never vividly capture everything I've seen and experienced throughout this one and a half month journey; I can only hope to describe the travel as separate individual memoirs. Here I share a 3-day fragment of that journey where we, Nijil and me, found ourselves adrift in the mountain state of Sikkim.<br />
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We reached Sikkim after staying at Darjeeling for four days. While Darjeeling was a place that created in me a sense of curiosity and determination to pursue new things in life, Sikkim taught me the virtues of living life as it is and finding beauty in togetherness and collectivism. Even though we had no clear plans to go anywhere, we knew we had to come to Sikkim once we realized it was just a few kilometers away from Darjeeling. Gangtok, the capital town of Sikkim, was very different from what I had imagined. This was partly because of the time we visited - when summer was at its strongest, and partly because I had expected Gangtok to be a pristine and peaceful town. Gangtok was not as crowded as Darjeeling, but it was definitely crowded enough to break our ideas of peace. Furthermore, the past few weeks found us moving through congested spaces, overpopulated streets, and noisy neighborhoods that cultivated in us a desire to relish the peace of Himalayas.<br />
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While we walked around in Gangtok, most of the people we met asked us to go to Nathu La to find the peace we were looking for and to have a Sikkim experience unlike any. We checked with various tour offices and booked a jeep on a share-basis for the next day.<br />
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Nathu La, which roughly means 'The pass of the Listening Ear', is a historic mountain pass in Sikkim. It was part of the old Silk route, acting as an entry point to India and connected the cold mountain valleys of Tibet to the lush green plains of Bengal. While traveling through the rough terrain that leads up to the pass, I imagined how it would have been years before - somehow in my mind, there is this image of a Chinese trader on a horseback, braving the coldest of winds and the toughest of mountains, in hope for finding warmth and wealth in the subcontinent. Nathu La was a vibrant route for trade between India and China during most of its history. Following Chinese occupation of Tibet, Nathu La became a lifeline for Tibetan refugees through which they moved first into Sikkim (which became an Indian state only in 1975) and later onto India. The pass was closed following the 1962 Sino-Indian war and was reopened only in 2006.<br />
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During our visit, the pass was a prime entry point for pilgrims striving to reach Mount Kailash in Tibet. We saw numerous acclimatization centers on the way for Kailash Mansarovar pilgrims where their health parameters were thoroughly monitored before they got the approval to move forward. I always held this belief that a craving for beauty coupled with a hardened pursuit to find it makes our faith quite overwhelming. I remembered my own naive spiritual expedition (years before I became the staunchest of atheists!) to Sabarimala (a hill shrine in Kerala) - driven by a desire to explore and traversing a painstaking path to the top of the hill, I felt my faith to be resounding. I imagine most of the people who travel along the same road which we were going through would be in a state of deep meditation as they make the journey; they would be moving along the harshest and perhaps the most beautiful terrains of the world to experience a place which will bring them salvation. As much as an atheist I was, I could not take away the beauty and emotion of that process!<br />
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While I consider it in a philosophical sense, I believe that we are all living an existence we know very little about. Our world is quite often an abstract entity that we create out of our thoughts. The travels we were making may well be seen as an endeavor to understand ourselves - something which many believe to be a spiritual experience. When I began to think like that, I thought that our journey and the journey made by a pilgrim is not entirely different. There is glory in the miles we leave behind, there is glory in the miles ahead of us, there is glory in the effort it takes to be in motion and there is glory in our destination.<br />
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We reached our momentary destination of Nathu La by afternoon. The pass and the border seemed like any other military camp, but the two large gates we saw from the parking ground immediately made us clear that it was not. When we were getting closer to the border, we found the presence of our military asserting itself a little more. We were warned by our driver to not take pictures and an Indian soldier reiterated the same as we got out of our jeep. We were asked to leave all our electronic equipments in our vehicle and that we should not interact with Chinese soldiers who patrolled their side of the border. I do not know if this was a normal course of action or something which was enforced recently following increased border skirmishes with China. We were guided to the border camp and from there moved further onto the border fence. The fence itself was no remarkable thing, it seemed like any other fence separating farmlands or private properties. But the purpose served by this iron fence, which was only as tall as my waist, was to separate two mighty countries of Asia - two countries that could overpower the world if it broke apart this fence and become an axis of power.<br />
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There were Indian soldiers vigilantly monitoring our side of the fence and a few feet away there were Chinese soldiers monitoring their side of the fence. Contrary to what the soldier asked us, there were many Indian tourists vying to get the attention of Chinese soldiers. When a Chinese soldier finally responded and began talking to a few tourists, everyone surrounded him with curiosity to perhaps identify what the Chinese ate or how they slept or how they talked. We avoided the crowd and moved a little away. Nijil found a place to sit down and maybe view the whole commotion in peace, while I loitered along the fence. There was a grumpy Chinese soldier who was actively avoiding everyone and was meticulously monitoring the fence. While tracing his steps, I noticed that the Chinese side was a small step above the Indian side and that the small fence was roughly tracing this step. I kept walking aimlessly and thought of how meaningless lines drawn on maps separated people, made them fight wars, and create a state of alarm almost always. When you are here, at the border, the lines we fight about seems very absurd and artificial. The mighty Himalayas continue in spite of the border conquering greater heights, the dust blown away from India settles in China and the air we exhale mixes with the air around and may well be inhaled by a Chinese soldier standing next to us whose job was to prevent us crossing over.<br />
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While I was in thoughts, the grumpy Chinese soldier looked at me and gave a small smile. He signaled me to come over and have a talk. I tried asking him his name in English and Hindi but found out that he understood no other language except Mandarin. With the very little English he knew and often using his hands to build up images, he somehow made me understand that he was from a village far away from people who spoke strange languages. I realized that his irritable appearance may well have been born out of this sudden frenzy which he found himself in. To this date, I do not understand what appealed to him suddenly to have an interest in a pitiful introvert like me. Maybe it was because I left him alone to begin with and yet looked at everything with a sense of curiosity. Maybe he saw a part of himself reflected in how I behaved, in how I stood blank.<br />
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What followed was one of the most intimate and memorable moments I had during travel as he held my hand over the fence, shook it fiercely, and asked me if I would stand with him for a photograph. There are many things I feel bad about in life, that day I felt bad we weren't allowed to take our cameras or our mobile phones along with us to the border. He called a fellow soldier, gave his phone to him, and asked me to join for the photo. He put his hand on my shoulder and I put mine on his while his friend took the photo. This little stunt made an Indian soldier come up to us and asked me to stay away from the fence. The Indian soldier exchanged a smile with the Chinese soldier while asking us to return to our vehicle if we had seen enough.<br />
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We went back to our jeep and after our fellow passengers came began our descend back to Gangtok, while I kept thinking about that moment. However narrow-minded the people who govern us may be, however endangering their politics, here we were - two human beings holding each other, between us a man-made fence that may separate us physically but not our human spirits!<br />
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We reached Gangtok and decided to spend the night at the bus stand. The bus stand was in a standstill that night and we found the calm we were looking for after all. I was reading 'The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and Nijil was reading a book written by Dalai Lama. It was getting cold and dark, and the security guard who watches over the bus stand at night came at around 8 PM. He asked where we were from and what we were doing here at night. We talked to him a bit about our journey and how we were trying to get through each day spending as little money as possible. We told him that hotel rooms were costly and we just needed some space to rest our heads for the night. We half expected him to throw us out, rather he quietly went inside the office and took out two wooden benches.<br />
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"Lie down and sleep!" he said, "How can you sleep on chairs?!"<br />
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My immediate reaction to that act was a severe overflow of emotions that I fought hard to contain. I lied down on the bench and tried reading once again but closed the book quickly as the sentences that were written became blurred by my thoughts. I kept it back inside my bag and closed my eyes. 'We are all but different voices which say the same thing' I thought 'Chinese, Indians, travelers from Kerala, night watchmen of Sikkim.. we all say the same thing!'</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-24073086811805583902020-04-01T10:53:00.000-07:002020-04-01T11:09:14.197-07:00A Night and A Day at Kamathipura<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red;">Planning to post memoirs of a few journeys which I made, many of which deeply moved me and perhaps influenced a personal transformation into who I am today. These may not be a travelogue in the ideal sense of the word but is a human story that I experienced when traveling. I also confess that many of these accounts will be corrupted by memory and some will be made dramatic to suit my poetic heart. These are also not chronologically ordered as you may expect and would often involve cases where one journey is split up into fragments as each fragment is equally important. Let me not waste my words on introductions, go on have a read...</span></div>
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<span style="color: red;">Dedicated to the wonderful people who I lived these journeys with</span></div>
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For a long long time, Mumbai has been a dream city for me. This was primarily because of the fables, fragrance, colors, and people of this dynamic city which when put together always formed a sophisticated and overwhelming human story. Moreover, it was always a city that I loved going to. I had the opportunity to do so at a very young age as my mother's sisters both found themselves settling at Mumbai. One of my very early memories of travel was a train journey to Mumbai from my hometown Thalassery when I was probably six or seven. The faint memories I have of that journey is mostly dominated by tunnels and bridges and how I eagerly watched them through the window seat (the window seat which I had to fight and win). Every tunnel that the train entered as it cut through the Western Ghats provoked extensive excitement and fear - something which still grips me as I begin each journey. Looking back, it was perhaps that journey that gave my life a new track to follow; one filled with countless tunnels and rivers, twice as dark and with bridges longer than any I have ever traveled upon until then.<br />
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I always remember being awed at the contradictions that Mumbai throws upon any traveler - where you can find the richest and the poorest people of our country coexisting, where skyscrapers impose itself upon bordering slums, where you can find elevated highways and people living their entire lives underneath them. This would certainly have shaped my ideas of our society and with due course of time would ignite my insides and create a desperate hope within me to change these norms. Though the journey which I wished to write about happened many years later, and it happened at Kamathipura - that rather infamous red light area of Mumbai.</div>
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It was a cold winter's day and I came to Mumbai from Pune via a bus that went up to Dadar. Dadar may well be a representation of everything Mumbai - crowded streets, the local train station that had a natural rush at any given time of the day and a place where everyday life went on adhering to a strict routine which made a traveler like me feel a bit out of place. It was midday, I was hungry and I had a backpack that was eating its way into my shoulders as I traversed along the busy lanes of Dadar. I remember going to a movie theater which showed a Marathi movie just to have momentary salvation by keeping my bag at their ticketing office. I don't remember the name of the movie but the experience was worth reminiscing about. I would certainly suggest you visit local language movie houses to know more about the society you traveled into! The movie left me rejuvenated and with gulps of evening tea hitting at my empty stomach, I was ready to explore more of this place.</div>
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I began walking aimlessly and rather subconsciously. I had this impulsive urge to reach South Mumbai by nightfall. I always harbored the idea that there was a lot more Mumbai-ness in South Mumbai than anywhere else and this made me walk seven to eight kilometers with an angry stomach, tired limbs and a backpack which resumed its hobby of eating into my shoulders. I passed beside numerous alleyways, constantly guided by the elevated freeway which ran above my head. At some point, I found myself deviating from this path and into those cramped lanes. It was maybe a hope to lose myself in an abundance of life, or maybe to stumble upon a local peddler selling stash. Whatever be the reason, I was pretty close to Kamathipura and when I checked my map and saw that I was close, I had an intrinsic urge to go and see the place.</div>
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I spend a whole night wandering along the lanes of Kamathipura. A brief reading of the history and demography of the place made me know that there are 14 lanes in Kamathipura, each inhabited by sex workers belonging to a specific linguistic and regional background. Women with thickly painted faces and bruised bodies occupied alleyways, footpaths, and balconies of crumbling buildings. I felt my disturbed mind empathetically embracing their physique. They were the products of our society, the broken children of our system. A system that created child workers, bonded laborers, manhole cleaners and countless more human beings who sell their body to earn a living because of the caste and class they were born into. I slept in front of a small shop and was woken up the next morning at daybreak.</div>
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I walked back onto those lanes once again and it was then that it happened. Out of pure chance, this woman walked up to me in the hope of finding at least one customer. She introduced herself with those very careful choice of words that still echoes in my ears,</div>
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"Give whatever you have and you can take me!" </div>
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It shook me. I have been approached by lots of sex workers the day before but none felt articulate enough to gather my attention.</div>
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"I am not interested" I replied.</div>
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"Then why are you here?" her displeasure was visible.</div>
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"Just to see.." I said rather sheepishly in a hope to end this awkward interaction.</div>
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"Will you take me with you as you see around?" she inquired.</div>
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I was certainly taken aback by her demeanor and how she interacted and couldn't say no to her request.</div>
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"I don't mind that if you want to see around too"</div>
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She laughed and said "You have to pay me extra for taking me out!"</div>
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I was perturbed and was beginning to think this was all a bad idea. I wanted to walk away from her but something within made me halt. She was wearing the brightest saree one could think of - dark violet and bright pink. She had a Bindi the size of a ping pong ball and her lips shone with cheap lipstick. She smelt of a piercing perfume which makes me cringe even while thinking about it. She was old but was trying, rather in vain, to hide her age. I imagine she would have reached that point where most people who walk into Kamathipura wouldn't take her even if she was rendering her services for free. I felt there was an island of broken-ness that hung around her; an island which she was trying desperately to swim out of but her tired body and hopeless aims could not muster the necessary assertiveness to do so. In that moment of indecision, I looked back and saw her standing haplessly and still watching me. It was then that I asked her to come.</div>
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We walked together. She tried holding my hand even though I resisted. I asked her if she wanted anything to eat. She said she would love to with a smile that for once broke everything she pretended to be. I smiled back and thought of something which I would never have thought on a normal day. I took her to a rather elegant restaurant looking out onto an adjacent street. Sitting there, you could catch a glimpse of how the biggest city in India commuted to work on yet another working day. The moment our breakfast came, she lost all the care in the world and began eating her way into it. I felt a strange unity with her and found myself enjoying every bit of that breakfast. Suddenly I had a deep desire to know more about this woman, who I presumed by then commanded the attention of almost everyone at the restaurant due to her rather deviant dressing sense.</div>
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"What is your name?" I asked.</div>
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"Juhi!" she said with a smile while still attending to the food.</div>
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"How long have you been here?" I inquired casually, perhaps with a curiosity to retrieve a moving story of suffering.</div>
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"I don't remember," she said rather scornfully. I understood that she didn't particularly enjoy the idea of her being interviewed and decided to break the topic altogether.</div>
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"Do you want to eat something else? Or maybe go somewhere else?" I asked.</div>
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"I want to see the Marine Drive!" she replied quickly "And drink rose milk!"</div>
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I felt she was shedding, even if fleetingly, what her life was until that instant. We walked on the Marine Drive with the 10 AM Sun warming our skin and felt a certain togetherness that people having deep meaningful relationships feel. I discovered a lot more about her through that moment of silence. While she drank her glass of rose milk watching how waves hit the tetra-pod rocks creating splashes reaching up to the walkway, she would have been consumed by the same curiosity I felt a few minutes before.</div>
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"What is your name?" she asked.</div>
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"Anand" I replied.</div>
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"Why did you really come here today?" she was still confused.</div>
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"Just to see.." I said once again to which she gave out a hollow laugh.</div>
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After a few more minutes of watching the waves, I walked her back to Kamathipura. On our way back, I asked her how much she would make in a day and whether it was enough to survive.</div>
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"You have to survive anyhow" she replied at the end of that conversation in a fragile voice.</div>
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We reached Kamathipura and I searched my pocket to take whatever money I had to pay her for her 'service'. Realizing what I was up to she held my hand tightly, gave me a deep hug and said</div>
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"I can't take your money now, my love!" She walked away without saying another word.</div>
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In that strange moment, I couldn't look as deeply into her eyes as I wished to, I couldn't ask her for a number to keep in touch and I couldn't capture her image to carve it out in my memory so that I may never forget her. I wanted to remember her, but years later apart from all the details that disturbed me the most - her Bindi, her piercing perfume, her bright saree, and her broken body - I don't remember how she looked. </div>
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There are days when I pass close to Kamathipura and I fruitlessly search for her. I doubt if I would recognize her even if I see her again, after all, our memory corrupts most of the images we have. I must say that when she hugged me I had a tear in my eye which would later come to dominate my emotions whenever I find myself amidst a human crisis, which would make me side with the people at instances of social division.</div>
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"You have to survive anyhow!" I would keep muttering to myself during days when I feel broken and depressed.</div>
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Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-19736797009752066112019-10-03T12:05:00.003-07:002019-10-03T12:05:47.999-07:00About a Bus Journey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red;">To Nijil</span></div>
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*</div>
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It has been a long time since I wrote anything worthwhile here. While I apologise to the reader (if at all anyone follows this shit anymore), I am also at odds as to what to write. Writer's block? Maybe. Am I even a writer? Maybe. Most likely, it is just a lack of any genuine experience which can inspire words to gush out of my mind. Perhaps, it is where we all end up - a gradual walk onto fields of deterioration and nothingness. Sometimes, it is amidst these moments of monotonous melancholy that sparks of memories fills up our insides and makes us remember who we were and what we've become.While it probably won't be much so as to pull us back onto roads we loved walking, it may be enough to slow down our pace as we move into oblivion.<div>
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I remember this journey we made from Dehra Dun back to Delhi. Looking back, I hold fondness for that time - just out of college, nothing to hold me back and a world full of opportunities in front of me. I was with Nijil - this guy who still lives his life as deviant as he did back then! We were two curious folks who were exploring lands we've only read about. While Nijil seemed re-assured of everything, I found myself insecure most of the time (then and now!).</div>
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As we moved through more than 11 States in 1 month, I missed home and Amma's food every single day. We slept in railway stations, bus stands, dormitories and dharmasalas; though I wasn't particularly interested to experience the discomfort. We met people, many who I still think of and almost all of them disfigured by my imprecise memory. We saw places, the names I still shout out with pride but the lanes and the winding roads long faded from my fragmented mind. We moved on and I've got to admit that this small act of moving on back then made me the pathetic philosopher I am today!</div>
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It was past midnight and most of the people in my bus had already slept. I kept gazing blankly at the darkness. The past few days were indeed harsh for someone like me; who lived in the security of a place to come home to and who had more than sufficient food to live by. The sudden displacement from that zone of comfort into a scenario wherein I'm not even remotely aware of where I will be sleeping that night or whether I will be having at least a packet of biscuit shook the very foundations of my ideas of existence. The things I experienced in Uttarakhand - the crowd in Haridwar and their collective frenzy, the deserted off season of Rishikesh disturbed only by the noise of fighting pigs, the relief I had when the coldness of Mussoorie calmed my conscience and to top it all off, the feeling of nervous expectation born out of a love confessed - every little thing exaggerated my insecurity.</div>
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I've got to say, I carried the weight of all that disturbing experience (disturbing in a rather constructive way) as I stepped into that bus back to Delhi. And as my sleepless mind tried entertaining itself with any flying strain of thought, it grasped unceremoniously at an existentialist revelation. To be honest, I didn't really know too much about existentialism back then (do I now?!), and whatever hit me seemed poignant and having profound meanings. There is this self realization you find in moments like these - wherein your self-aggrandisement shatters into bits. For me, I felt small - someone occupying a passing role in the intricate lives of often complicated people. All my concerns, all my troubles seemed to dissolve into a collective human story of suffering and how all of us strive to survive the suffering. </div>
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I felt an overwhelming feeling of love that broken, nomadic and damaged people feel for one another. And as my eyes grew damp, I proposed my everlasting love to the decrepit, to my fellow travelers, to the downtrodden and to the ones who smile back at me. I realized (or is it a realization which I feel only upon looking back?) that in most of the journeys we make, the places we see don't matter, it is the moments we make and the things we understand which matters the most.</div>
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Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-78306258822800404022018-11-22T08:31:00.003-08:002018-11-22T08:43:27.481-08:00Bokeh<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Let me begin with a
question which keeps revisiting me every time I sit down to write - How big
should a collection of words be to be called a story? Do words matter at all?
Will a well-crafted, emotion-filled and deeply philosophical sentence classify
as a story?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">***<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Walking underneath
sodium lamps in a city that turns yellow come nightfall, I saw them smoking
cigarette and laughing over jokes in a language I could not understand. They
were dressed in luminescent green to reflect any incoming motor headlight. For
most of their life they were dots on top of sky-scraping construction sites or
blurred with dust and cement on roadsides. Near me, with every smoke they let
out piercing deep into my nostrils and further into my lungs, I felt them,
strangely as it may seem, to be real.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">There are stories
pouring out of homes and into streets every night – some you hear and forget,
some you write down while some you step on and kill softly. In between these stories, I heard a mother’s
lullaby round a corner where the street bends unceremoniously into drainage.
The song she sang reminded me of my Amma. Out of nowhere I found myself wondering when had Amma suddenly stopped singing to me. Was it when I first went to school or was
it when I turned ten? Sometimes these little things fall apart so delicately that you won't realize it till the day it is completely lost.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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A sudden burst of rain found me sheltering beside a closed shop. There were two middle aged men, drunk and happy, hearing songs on a radio. One of them asked me if I had eaten and that he had food to spare. He introduced himself as Senthil. He told he was a painter and his friend as a former military person. Senthil said that for the past eight years, this shop-side was their home. The military guy, he said, was kicked out from his own home by his children. I looked at him half enquiring, he smiled silently. Senthil sang along with the radio for a while and said Tamil songs and MGR were his lifeblood. The rain was fading, making the music grow louder while I sat and thought about the food he offered to spare. When I was leaving, Senthil asked me to live my life by a song. "<i>Kannai Nambaathey</i>" he sang "<i>Unnai Yemaatrum.. Kanneeril Maatum".</i> With the little Tamil I knew, I could understand that he asked me not to trust my own eyes.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
My grandmother was waiting for me to come home so that she can go to sleep. My grandfather was asleep in his chair. This disease which was eating into his brain changed his physicality and mannerisms so much so that sleeping became his only real habit. He had become forgetful, he became restless, he suffered from hallucinations and sleep disorders. Perhaps for him the world wasn't as harsh as it was for us. For me, the most troubling aspect about this disease was that it made me forget how he used to be without it. It not only affects him, I thought, but the memories of him too.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The city was sleeping and I was surrounded by the blue light of my laptop screen. How many words are necessary to make a story, I thought. I didn't have much, I didn't have words with structure or emotions. I didn't have novels or legends waiting within. I didn't have satire or political observations. All I had were the things I saw and the moments I lived, and I knew I had to write it down anyhow.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-2390754786394573152018-11-12T09:28:00.001-08:002018-11-12T10:26:04.335-08:00The Murder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On Easter Day last year, most people (including me) in our town woke up to hear that Jayan had murdered a man. To begin with, it has to be said that many of us wasn't particularly shocked with the news. Maybe it was because we felt Jayan personified a man who would kill another man just for the sake of it.<div>
<br><div>
<div>
"Jayan, he is as dark as the hair on my armpit" Johnson <i>chettan</i>, my nosy neighbour pointed out.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
"He is a fucking Maoist" said Ravi <i>chettan </i>(owner, chef and waiter of 'Ravi's High Range Tea Shop') while he handed a glass of tea to Comrade Valsan.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
Valsan, sipping his favorite morning tea and reading the report in <i>Desabhimani</i> stated the most obvious of all reasons, "He is a low caste scum!"</div>
</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
These conversations continued inside homes, between school benches, under bus waiting shelters and in toddy shops. Everyone who remotely knew Jayan seemed to have a very deep and thorough understanding of his motives - everyone was sure he did it and everyone was disappointed it took him so long to have blood on his hands.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
Jayan was indeed considered by many as a person who was born with a desire to cause havoc. I have heard numerous fables of him which details his misadventures, his yearning to spend hours drinking locally brewed alcohol or toddy and his voyeur for violence at the smallest of stimuli. I must say that in our locale, most of us grew up knowing what Jayan was capable of. So it wasn't much of a surprise that this final piece was added to his jigsawed life. Yet some people like me, we thought this was just a beginning.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
Weeks later, when Jayan was granted bail, he came to my home asking for money. Yes, I didn't give his full wage amidst the issue, but then I had no real intention to give money to a murderer. He would buy toddy and kill someone again, I presumed.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Sir, I have my wife and daughter to feed. Do you want them to be prostitutes?" Jayan begged.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I wanted to let him know that if his daughter wants to be a prostitute, she can start with me. I had to control myself from spitting it out because that wasn't proper etiquette for a person owning land like me. So I refused his request saying that it wasn't my concern.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
To be frank, I always thought of Jayan as a committed employee. When his co-workers took siestas, Jayan would cut weed (which was usually done by older womenfolk). When others would take eternities to finish food or tea during work hours, Jayan would get it over in minutes, he never spoke to his co-workers, he never laughed or joked about anything at all. It is funny how people like him were tailor-made for physical work but could never live a life of humanity. I used to think that it was because they were born low, survive that low and become low in the process, that it was their way of life.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Contractor Jaison came to me with Comrade Valsan a week after Jayan came begging. They sat on my new couch as if they were sitting on a bench in a park. They folded their dirty legs criss-cross so that both their calves can experience harmony when it sinks into cushion. I hated it. I mean, I would've done the same thing if it were an inexpensive couch in one of their homes, but mine was costly.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"You know Jaison sir, right?" Valsan asked.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Tell me one businessman in this town who don't know him, Valsan <i>chhetta</i>" I smiled and shook Jaison's hand.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The conversation which followed mostly centered on Jaison's need to sell his tea estate near the border and leave our place for good.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"You see Anand" he said while changing his sitting position and thankfully dropping his legs from my couch "I am too busy taking up Government contracts that I have no time to look after that shit hole"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
He laughed a little when he told 'shit hole' but seeing our lack of interest stopped and continued "Besides, I don't trust no fucker here, even my brother's son. So I have no option but to sell it. And Valsan here says you maybe interested."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I was in fact interested in the plot but knowing how these deals worked, I expressed how profitless it would be if I took it up. "Besides" I remembered "It is where that Jayan lives. It is where he killed your brother, the case will surely cause me problems."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Hearing this Jaison laughed again, "Jayan! That lowborn scumbag!" he shouted. "He is an idiot, an absolute idiot!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Jaison put a small break in his speech, possibly for us to give our comment about the statement. But Valsan, me and surely the entire town was tired and no longer interested in the murder or in Jayan, so we didn't add anything.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Jaison continued eventually, "That asshole! He comes drunk to threaten my brother. He had the guts to say in front of our family that me and my brother were perverts, that we were troubling his wife and daughter! That fucker!" Nerves in his temples were now standing up.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"He is a weak guy though. And a fool!" he shouted "He called the police himself that night, saying he murdered my brother. The fool! Saying he killed because my brother tied him up and beat his daughter. I mean, if it was me, I would've hid the body and fled away!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"So you think if I buy the estate the police or Jayan wouldn't be a trouble? Still too risky for me."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Boy, you think Jayan will be out for long? He doesn't have money to fight the case, he will go back to where he belongs my friend." Jaison said with confidence.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"But then he did it in self-defence, he has an argument there. I don't want trouble if I'm to buy the estate."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Dear friend" Jaison stood up from the couch, came up and sat on the teapoy in front of me to make his point careful and clear, "This case is not a problem" he said, now stressing on each word to make it sound perfect "We.. have.. money.., we.. have.. power.. and besides this fucker put a wooden stick in my brother's head for Christ's sake!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"You may be right" I said "But I can take your estate only if you remove Jayan's family from the property and give me a 10% discount on market value"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Jaison shifted back towards the couch and thought for a long time. He smiled and said we have a deal.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Tomorrow is my first Easter in the new estate. And it is only obvious that I think about what happened here a year back. I look towards the partially destroyed outhouse which used to be Jayan's home. I see Contractor Jaison and his brother James coming in the dark, holding a wooden stick. I see Jayan trying to stop them in panic and getting beaten hard, repeatedly - on his torso, chest and back. I see his daughter and wife coming out and getting assaulted. I see Jayan struggling to stop the stick pouncing on him again and again. I see him in anger, I see him getting hold of the stick and in pure drunken rage beating up James. I see Jaison running for his own safety.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Tomorrow morning I need to go to Ravi <i>chettan's </i>Tea Shop. I need to tell them, tell that pathetic Johnson and everyone else<i> </i>that Jayan didn't murder James because he was a Maoist or a drunkard. He murdered Jaison because some people are born to kill, born to be murderers and they know or can be nothing else. It is, after all, their way of life.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-49505153901419148942018-10-08T11:35:00.001-07:002018-10-08T11:44:40.861-07:00Lavenders in our Portico | Part 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On the first morning of her last summer, Vygha woke up to find her body covered in sweat and her mind yearning for Anees. It was not an ordinary yearning; for numerous years she fell asleep wanting his heated breaths to hit her cold face but now she wanted something more. She wanted to know, once again, how it feels to have his manhood move along her bosom and to pull it towards her and kiss it till he cried with passion.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She remembered days when they laid naked in their portico, often smoking, surrounded by the sound of crickets and the twinkle of fireflies. She used to tell him about lavenders and mountain tops, he would close his eyes and listen. Anees loved her stories, he loved her journeys, and she loved him for it. They planned countless adventures after their marriage and often did none; they wanted to smoke the costliest weed, they wanted to travel the world like hippies and they wanted to grow lavenders in their portico.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Vygha got out of bed, her thoughts were still raging wars inside as she wiped away the sweat and tied her remaining silver hair into a bun. She walked towards her daughter's room, it was still and dark, she hadn't yet woken up. As Vygha grew more and more senile, she became rather fond of early mornings. She remembered how, during her youth, she hadn't seen the Sun rise for years. She was the aphrodite of never ending midnights and Anees a true partner in crime. It was during one of those nights that she, high on adrenaline and drugs, asked Anees if he could handle her as a wife. It may have occurred to him as a surprise, but then he was already in love and couldn't resist. Together they waged wars against time with blatant animosity; they drank wine all night and made love all day.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But now it seemed to Vygha that time had indeed won. She walked, feebly as she could, to the kitchen, made tea and went with it to the portico. She looked at their yard and at the portico as if it was flowering in front of her for the first time. She felt a deep and nostalgic affinity towards grains of soil, blades of grass and every plant and flower she saw. She found with delight how the portico blossomed with the many flowers she kept- roses, poppies and dahlias - all caressed by her wrinkled hands and visited by all the bees in their town. She remembered how she used to paint these pots and hang them from the roof so that butterflies needn't be so grounded to get what they wanted. She thought about foremothers of these flowers and wondered if they knew Anees like she knew him, after all they too would have counted his pubic hairs and learned when he moans the most.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She also remembered, with discomfort, how the mango tree planted by her mother was cut down to make a car shed for her son-in-law and how the name board announcing 'Architect Vygha Krishnan' gradually rusted and fell away. It was only recently that Anees's motorbike was sold to an antique shop and her car, beyond old, was made into a sitting space overlooking the valley. Her daughter wanted to sell the car at first, but Vygha protested and decided to overhaul it. She called a mechanic and asked him to cut down doors on one side to make an opening, and to turn the seats to face the opening. She kept the engine for herself and asked the mechanic to paint the insides in the darkest of blues. After the work was finished the mechanic was so in awe at himself and his work that he didn't take money from Vygha, but gave her his gratitude for bringing out the artist in him.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She would sit inside that car in the evenings, take with her a kerosene lamp, some books and her diary. She had read all the books she owned and now found pleasure in re-reading many of them to find bits and pieces she missed during her previous readings. She would note these down in her diary along with a remark on how well she lived that day. This activity was partly for her own amusement and partly to give her daughter and her son-in-law their own moment of privacy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She had indeed become reclusive, but she still didn't develop a lack of affinity towards life. It was always difficult for her to await death in peace, she could never do that. Even when Anees came back home one day in a freezer, even when her daughter and son-in-law shifted to help 'ward-off' her loneliness, even when every friend she knew had died or just plainly forgot, she couldn't welcome her own death. She would rather sit idle in the portico for hours tussling with her impulses and warding away strange desires to travel. She knew she wasn't able, at least physically, to be at places where she wanted to be - the highest villages, the coziest cafes and the funkiest parties, but she could still reach there in her mind.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Things have indeed changed, she thought as she finished her tea, the Sun came up in the far East, and its first rays covered everything around in an orange tinge. Light in her daughter's room was put on, another day had begun.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-55636925561615300422018-07-24T23:58:00.001-07:002018-07-24T23:58:58.662-07:00Plight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As his arms softened around her belly button, Maria had a deep urge to disappear. She was a prostitute; her breasts were hardened by constant violence it endured from its clients, her pubis was infected, her lips grimaced in pain every time she asked it to kiss someone. And yet, this man was tender towards her. 'She didn't deserve it' she thought.<br />
<br />
"Maria, what is it that you think about?" he asked.<br />
<br />
"I'm thoughtless." she lied.<br />
<br />
"Your face looks like Lake Kinneret in moonlit nights - blank.. white.." he said.<br />
<br />
Maria smiled. She loved this man. He had slept under the moon and traveled to Eastern lands. He was a traveler, a dreamer - she found it to be a sensual combination. But she couldn't beg him to stay, could she?<br />
<br />
His hands pulled at her skirt allowing her rotting vulva feel the coldness of his winter lips - his long beard stroked her thighs, his hair flowed peacefully along the slopes of her stomach. Maria was afraid, she felt she could no longer tame the wild beatings of her shallow heart. She wanted him, she couldn't live without, he was her messiah.<br />
<br />
She gathered courage and asked, "Will you go away again?"<br />
<br />
"To India?"<br />
<br />
"To anywhere?" she frowned.<br />
<br />
"I do not know Maria. I do not know what tomorrows might bring. I have learnt to live in todays for now" he smiled.<br />
<br />
"You look peaceful" she mused. "I don't like it. Are you becoming a nihilist?"<br />
<br />
"A Buddhist!" he replied.<br />
<br />
"What is that?" she was visibly in distaste.<br />
<br />
"Someone who believes that we create the world through our thoughts, that we make our meanings out of nothing."<br />
<br />
"Equally Nihilistic!" she grimaced.<br />
<br />
"No. More beautiful. More lively." he smiled.<br />
<br />
'Beautiful Nihilism!' she thought. He settled himself under her hairy armpit where her sweat seemed to him like dew drops on cold grass. She knew he would fall asleep soon. All his life he searched for something to keep him alive and now he has found a reason so worth living that he may die for it, she thought. She couldn't understand such commitment to an idea, she herself had barely started committing to a person.<br />
<br />
"Are you sleepy?" she asked.<br />
<br />
"I must say so."<br />
<br />
"When will you come here again?"<br />
<br />
"When blood cease to flow along the streets, when people respect each other, when there are no Gods and no Kings, I will come to you!" he replied.<br />
<br />
"And if it is your blood that flows, what will I be left with?"<br />
<br />
"My blood and an idea!" he said sleepily.<br />
<br />
Maria watched him fall asleep, she didn't blink, she could feel breeze from the highest mountains of Greece slamming at her door and windows. She watched him all night, how deep he sleeps and the way his lips curl into smiles every now and then. He was a dreamer.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Maria, as she walked by Kinneret, had only him in her mind. She could still smell his blood in her napkin, her hands were pressing on it as if it were his genitals - softly, cautiously. Contrary to what he imagined, the blood only flowed more and many regarded him as God himself. How indecorously the world handled our dreams, she thought.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
A gentle wind was blowing and it brought silent waves in the lake. Maria sat motionless. She did look like Kinneret, she thought.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-10644940911747071422018-03-17T12:27:00.001-07:002018-03-17T19:47:40.280-07:00Hiraeth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;">*</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;">Dedicated to Amma and Achan</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;">*</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
It was a single-roomed quarters that existed at a time far before technology, you may say it outlives other memories of home precisely because of this attribute - there was more life, more birds, more stars in the night sky than I've ever known. Along its walls my crayons traced intimacy, on its floors I urinated unperturbed. I knew nature, I grew aware for the first time, I dreamt my most artless dreams and slept with no concerns..<div>
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There was this story of a mahout and elephant that Amma would say to me when I was barely learning to talk.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;"><br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I still hear Amma's concerned voice saying how the elephant who grew restless at the way the mahout treats him kills him one day. This creates anger and fear among people around and they call a forest guard to kill the elephant, because apparently he had become 'dangerous'. The guard picks up a gun from somewhere and repetitively shoots the elephant, the elephant succumbs, crying in agony.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There would be some reference of the mahout again and his sorry state, and my mother would say <i>"Paavam paapaan!" </i>("Poor Mahout!").</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>"Paavam aana!" </i>("Poor Elephant!") I would correct her offensively.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Amma says I would do that every single time she ended the story with the mahout being poor.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Chemboth </i>(Greater Coucal) is my favourite bird. I used to eat my lunch only if she came by to eat with me. Lunchtime was that time of the day when I would sit outside our kitchen with Amma and observe the magnanimity of nature, of her many forms - crawling earthworms to high-flying eagles. We co-existed peacefully - our radio would be playing melodious Malayalam songs, Sunlight may occasionally pierce the gap between jack tree leaves and hit lightly upon us, and we sat conversing about our day's happinesses and wonders.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And amongst the stories I heard and animals I saw, I prefered <i>Chemboth </i>more than anyone else, we could connect with each other strangely, maybe because we both were poor fliers.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Load-shedding is a word I still like the most. Every night there would be 30 minutes when power was stopped so as to balance demand and supply. All of us would sit together, talk and watch the night sky. Star-gazing for me would've made its faint beginnings in one of those nights. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Everytime I look up, it was with wonder. Why are they shining? Are they worlds I may never know of? Ignobility would've begun somewhere there too.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
All worthless talks we have today can be traded for those 30 minutes of chit-chat and sing-songs. And whenever I see mercury lamps vomiting light into my life, I wonder how much demand-supply mismatch should be there for the world to be dark again.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I remember a poem Amma would sing to me, <i>"ee valliyil ninnu chemme, pookal pokunnitha parannamme.."</i> which more or less exemplified the curiosity of those times. It was an interaction between a mother and her child in which the child mistakes butterflies for flowers which as he sees it are flying away from him. The mother would calm him down saying that he was wrong, it were butterflies all along.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The vast distances between that poem and where I am today are separated by mishaps, depressions and unrequited dreams that sometimes I look back and wonder if it were indeed flowers that flew away in between those words.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Rainy days had a certain smell to it, and a distinct color. Drops of rain would hit opened out leaves and shatter into a million silver strokes diluting the dark green background. <i>Chembarathis </i>(shoe flowers) would bloom in our yard and millipedes would roam around in pride. It was their time of the year, when life was sprayed on Earth as downpours.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I would make paper boats and watch them move slowly (braving the rains) in puddles in front of our home. Some would soak and slump down, others would hold on and find new shores. I often wished it would reach seas afar, I hoped it would see things I could never see then.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
My first memory of school was rain, mud and painful eyes. I remember seeing Amma leaving me and I desperately wished to run behind her. From lying naked on pure earth I was displaced into a room full of strange beings wearing dull shirts and tight trousers. I knew I didn't belong here, I knew I had to go away, I knew I must not separate myself from Amma.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Amma came to pick me up in the evening, and we came home in an autorickshaw. She was asking me eagerly what I learned and how school was, I didn't reply a thing. On the way home, one of my new slippers escaped my foot and flew out of the rickshaw, l watched it sink into mud as the rickshaw sped along. I thought of saying to Amma that I've lost it, but then I preferred silence over dissonance.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
On a random day, a snake found her way into our home and Achan was trying to get it out somehow. It sheltered itself inside a bucket in which we kept rice. Achan tried tipping the bucket but the snake just wouldn't let go. He then pushed the bucket a little and it fell upside down, he pulled the bucket back releasing the snake and every little grain of rice amidst a curious and scared audience.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Achan chased the snake towards the main door using a stick and as it almost crossed the door, he tried to slam it shut. The snake was caught in between,- her head breathing airs of freedom, her lower half irredeemably lost and probably somewhere near the middle her hopes cut off. She jerked a little before calming down.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I still see their images sometimes, along with sounds from somewhere far away. The snake, the elephant and how easily they were killed.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-70966138207899678582018-02-27T00:14:00.001-08:002018-02-27T00:14:25.926-08:00Red Shift<p dir="ltr">Perhaps,<br>
Cosmic infinities could not have contained<br>
our purposeless love.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Maybe,<br>
Galaxies around us could not have sheltered<br>
our twilight hopes.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Truly,<br>
Our only misgiving was an expanding universe<br>
harboring darker halves of us all.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Sadly,<br>
We are but nothingness living an enlightened accident,<br>
Moving away from each other since our birth.</p>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-5440869508250062852018-02-18T07:56:00.001-08:002018-02-18T20:07:48.945-08:00Ameena<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: red;">This is the first of a series of stories (hopefully) which I like to call 'Flutter'. I believe you can gauge the intent of these stories once you read them.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: red;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: red;">Love,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: red;">Anand.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<span style="text-align: left;"><br></span>
<span style="text-align: left;">Ameena would lie down in her balcony on days like these, wondering where she came from and what her purpose was in life. </span><span style="text-align: left;">Aluva river, in front of her, peacefully flowing onto the Arabian Sea would reflect starry ski</span><span style="text-align: left;">es above. She felt intimately related to the celestial peace which descended around her; moon in the distance, lights from the airport, and the ever benevolent silence. She could imagine the farthest extents of Universe right here in this negligible point in a negligible Earth, for that she was thankful.</span></div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
The chicken curry her husband threw on her face still burned her eyes and nose, it was spicy alright. He used a word to describe it specifically and her existence generally, she couldn't help but think about it. How would he know what that word means to her, how would he know what that word means to humanity. This was not the first time he reproached her using words she considered pure, but then she was aware of how present parlance brands her puritan words as derogatory.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
Ameena.. She loved her name, but then twenty seven years of married life made her forget the tunes of those syllables - jumping up, sliding free and hitting a sudden stop! Ameena.. Her eyes watered when she tried to remember how her <i>Umma</i> would call her 'Ameenakutti', it was so long back that it seemed non-existent now.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
She grew tired after a while and tiptoed her way back to bed. The air conditioner in the room made a cranky noise as it threw cold artificial air into the room. She remembered how disturbed she used to be when her <i>Vaapa</i> would buy her leather bags and costly deodorants, she would smile and accept it all the same, she barely knew another way to behave.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
Once in bed Ameena twisted and turned for a long time; she tried burying her face in her pillow, she tried pushing her head towards her breasts, she tried singing herself lullabies. There was an eruption of something uncontainable inside, she had to find vents to release it. How pitiably he used that word, she thought.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
"Khaled.." she called. "Khaled.."</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
Khaled usually detests when his sleep is disturbed, but then Ameena never did a thing like this before, he was as perturbed as he was angry.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
"What is it?" he shouted.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
She got up and switched on the light, looking him sternly in the face, her eyes held fires that devoured any words he had to offer. He sat transfixed.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
Ameena wanted to be precise on this, she didn't want to hold anything back or shout anything new. She wanted it to be clear and certain, while making sure it portrays the uproar inside. She knew she shouldn't make it too stern so that she burns herself out completely or too soft that she may seem magnanimous. She gathered words in her mind and slowly brought it out of her mouth.</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
"You and I were born out of a vagina too, my love.." she said and gently walked back to the balcony.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-67406304860011117822018-02-13T04:11:00.001-08:002018-02-13T04:11:56.365-08:00Gravity<p dir="ltr">Who can gauge,<br>
The depths of human mind in thought,<br>
Effervescent streams of velvet hope,<br>
Red-shifting music that sink souls in thriving pools<br>
of celestial re-births and re-discoveries.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Who can fathom,<br>
The distances a migrating bird must fly,<br>
Vagaries and silence of lives beneath,<br>
The art of a rare chemical dance<br>
and its unpronounced everyday evolutions,<br>
A story of recurring dreams,<br>
Painted with dark nostalgic loves left behind.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Who can put to words,<br>
The grandeurs of extinct universes,<br>
Their sunlit banks, their wonderous cosmic evenings,<br>
Beginning of life, death of stars and a heroic force,<br>
Working upon primordial imperfections,<br>
To build home as we know it now.</p>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-21067426992155177472018-02-04T21:49:00.001-08:002018-02-04T21:49:50.243-08:00S.O.P.<p dir="ltr">I heard you say my truths are veiled lies,<br>
I heard you say my mind is crooked and high,<br>
I heard you say people detest my chronic rhymes,<br>
I heard you say what am I but my routine jibes,<br>
I heard you say nobody follows my divergent vibes,<br>
I heard you say fuck yourself, go and die.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But my dear, these insecurities, they are mine,<br>
Mock me, choke me, sock me, I will live my life!</p>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-35092620304173386822018-02-03T09:11:00.000-08:002018-02-03T09:12:53.481-08:00Achlys<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I contain<br />
<div>
multiple loves.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I love how wet earth</div>
<div>
drags her alluring lips</div>
<div>
on my hardened cheeks,</div>
<div>
I love silent mountains</div>
<div>
shouting unused truths,</div>
<div>
I love my mother's milk</div>
<div>
and memories of her breasts,</div>
<div>
I love your hands</div>
<div>
when they entangled mine.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It stagnates</div>
<div>
as avenues shrink,</div>
<div>
Souls to receive it</div>
<div>
reclines self-seeking,</div>
<div>
Equally alone as I maybe.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My fathomless loves</div>
<div>
rot and infect,</div>
<div>
Turns malignant,</div>
<div>
Soak and wrinkle</div>
<div>
uncontainably,<br />
I dribble blood.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Everything I love</div>
<div>
kills me a little more.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-25154868448783094992018-01-30T23:56:00.001-08:002018-01-31T00:03:42.906-08:00Telos<p dir="ltr">Let my words be flawless today,<br>
Clear as silver stream,<br>
Fresh as morning spring,<br>
Let it reach you<br>
toiling through doubts in your mind,<br>
Let it move along your turbulent vistas,<br>
Where piety had made melancholic tombs,<br>
And proceeds of war made wounds that can't be healed,<br>
Where I once made my abode severing your rueful constraints.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Let my words reach there again,<br>
As an ending quote,<br>
Or maybe a wholesome resurgence,<br>
Like light following an eclipse,<br>
Like land after years of sea,<br>
Let my words make meanings,<br>
For long it was only noise - farcical moonshine,<br>
Today let it be plain and from my hardened heart,<br>
Let it leave no doubt, no points to guess,<br>
No rhyming sentences, no superficial nonsense.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I want it straight,<br>
As pure as my perpetual longing,<br>
As unfettered as my resurrecting love,<br>
Evading your shallow pools of dubiety,<br>
Caressing the happiness we shared<br>
and the grief we forgot,<br>
Let it touch the nights we laid awake,<br>
Let it bring rainbows for our storms,<br>
Let it stay there etched,<br>
In the sky, by the shore<br>
and on snowcapped moons.</p>
<p dir="ltr">For today I want you to know,<br>
That I am here and I will be waiting for you,<br>
Through rain, snow, spring and fall,<br>
Through tears, smiles, laughs and fears,<br>
Through days, months, years and time,<br>
All my life,<br>
I will be here,<br>
And I will be waiting.</p>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-8687252579513278692018-01-20T19:34:00.000-08:002018-01-20T19:34:49.170-08:00Spaceships<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
What good are stars my love,<br />
If I cannot talk about them<br />
to you?<br />
What good is the moon,<br />
Upon whose silver canvas<br />
the dreams we drew,<br />
If you cannot see?<br />
What good are journeys,<br />
Miles I walk,<br />
Galaxies and heat deaths,<br />
If it isn't you that I reach?<br />
What good are memories,<br />
Travels in time,<br />
Like pulsars in bleak space,<br />
If I cannot find your laughs amidst?<br />
<br />
What good are spaceships,<br />
If there are only voids<br />
that I may reach?</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-35976387781116899302018-01-20T05:33:00.001-08:002018-01-20T06:32:43.819-08:00Mayari<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I remember watching her, it was a long long time back that I can't quite recollect how she looked like that day. She was waiting for bus after college, I don't remember who she was with, all I remember was that I was afraid to go near her, I don't really know why, but I was. I watched, I remember watching her, she looked beautiful.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I don't usually carry my umbrella to places, it's not that I particularly enjoyed getting wet, it's just that I don't like carrying too many things when I'm traveling. I'd prefer getting wet to perpetually living attentive to my umbrella.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It was raining that day, I don't really remember where I was. We were walking, she had her umbrella opened, it could barely fit us both. I could feel her close to me, I could feel myself all messed up. The rain was pouring down and parts of us were together and dry, while parts of us were apart and soaking.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
She was by no means the most charming, she wasn't perhaps the most beautiful. But when I think about her I tend to remember a motorbike ride.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It was midnight, or close to midnight, I am not sure. I was driving around to ease my thoughts. There was a storm brewing, both on the inside and out. It rained unawares, it hit me from all sides. There was noise, there was thunder and the more I drove, the more I became weak. I was slowly drowning in the rain.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There were no signs of shelter, and my spects got blurry. I couldn't see a thing, I thought I never had it in me to survive the tempest. For once, I thought I'd pass out, the rain was ceaseless. Occasionally I could see lightning drawing sad silver lines upon a sober black sky. What a sad way to leave things behind, I thought.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I closed my eyes, I knew I may not make it, I cried. Suddenly, out of nowhere it stopped and everything seemed calm. I didn't hear the rain beating down, I didn't see any lightning. I looked up and saw a bridge running perpendicular to the road, it was leaking from places, it looked weary and old, but it was keeping the storm away.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I don't know why you have to make everything so complicated" she was saying. I was growing numb, I was more and more confused. My hands were shaking, my brain was shivering. I had this cough that won't stop, my throat was bleeding.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I didn't mean to.." I was saying "I never meant to"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I kept walking up and down the whole night and I couldn't understand a thing. I had this great ledger of failures and losses that when I rewind I have plenty of negativities to hold onto. She is here, I was thinking, she is here with you now. Maybe if any one of those failures didn't happen, you wouldn't have even known her, I kept saying. I got up, I couldn't lose her, not today.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I'm sorry" I said. She had slept. I kept walking around the whole night.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
That night, it was cold that night, but I didn't feel a thing. The valley before me was covered in fog, all I could see was bleak darkness. We were.. no.. I was smoking and was so far away from everything I've ever known that it almost seemed like complete freedom. I always had this idea of leaving things behind and traveling till I die.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There was this song, it still catches me sometimes, but the more I heard it that night the more I felt I may ruin everything. I was still pulled apart by ideas of home and ideas of freedom. I was lodged between currents of thought and the satisfaction of letting things go. What is the purpose of life? Yeah, I'd say it never had any true purpose but the ones we make.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
She was texting me on the other side, I knew it was a question between living a sane life or trying to survive an idea which may make me go insane at the end of it all. What is the purpose of life? Is it to live an idea insanely, or is it to live by a life normally?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I don't remember much of what I said to her that day, but then I said if you could tolerate a mad poet I will be here waiting for you. I smoked another round, the fog cleared in the valley, I could see lights.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Given a chance would you not meet her, again?" the doctor asked.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Who?"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Your friend, or lover, or whatever she is?"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Why do you have to ask that?" I said.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Leave it. Can you tell me why she was so special to you?"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
My hands were getting cold. I badly wanted to find her hands from somewhere, it was freezing.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Anand, can you tell me?"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I felt a strange sensation to run away, or to punch this guy straight on his face, or both.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Have you ever rode a motorbike in the rain, doctor?" I asked.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I have" he replied.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Then you'd know.." I said.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
One thing I tried not to do was complicate things, I was unsure of many things going on with me and inside my head, but I am sure that I never complicated it.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"But I always thought you loved me" I said.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I do, but it is not how it seems"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I was confused, I was doubting myself, I was doubting whatever notions I've ever held. I may very well be an average writer, I maybe only a mediocre thinker, and maybe I couldn't do anything good with my life.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I hope you'd understand me" she said.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I have reached a point wherein I couldn't understand myself. I was lost midway, I was neither living the idea, nor the normal life.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I do understand you" I said "But it will take me every ounce of love I have for you.."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I remember watching her, she was beautiful. I knew it was all about taking that first step, going towards her. It doesn't have to be today, you can tell that you love her some other time, I thought. Just make that first step now. I was afraid, I was childish, I was stupid. I stood there and kept watching, she was beautiful and I could never move an inch.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-32821659229247585032018-01-14T01:36:00.000-08:002018-01-14T02:40:06.067-08:00Inquietude<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Can you hear me Amma?</div>
<div>
Sometimes I can't hear myself,<br />
Sights remain blurry,<br />
Voices frail,<br />
Paths I walk infect me,<br />
If I stop now,<br />
Can you survive?<br />
<br />
Do you remember Amma?<br />
The day you left me alone at school?<br />
I felt being ripped apart,<br />
From you, trees and crows,<br />
Earthworms and centipedes,<br />
I cried,<br />
You never came.<br />
<br />
Did you know when I first lied to you?<br />
"The wound in my hand was<br />
from a fall in the playground"<br />
Would you have held me close,<br />
If I said the truth then?<br />
Would you kiss me to sleep,<br />
If I say the truth now?<br />
<br />
Could you come here Amma?<br />
Will you rest me on your lap?<br />
Will you sing me a lullaby,<br />
of butterflies, flowers, and love?<br />
Will you stroke my erupting head?<br />
I need to sleep.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
For those who don't follow Malayalam, '<b>Amma</b>' is the word we use for 'mother'. I could've used 'mother' itself here, but then it wouldn't have been a poem at all.</div>
</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-42895922634804043562017-12-02T11:24:00.000-08:002017-12-02T11:24:11.093-08:00Vacuum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
Between you and me</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
spreads this sea</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
of irreversible void,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
I swim through it,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
I run whenever I can,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
but I pant, I faint,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
I lose hope eventually.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
Will you remember me?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
How I was, how I sounded,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
How my dreams were purposeful,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
And my arms rigid?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
Will you remember me</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
and the depth in my love when I said so?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
I am replaced,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
I lose my sustenance,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
Filled with vacuum,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
Within, around, everywhere,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
I am now meagre,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
I am now meaningless,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px;">
I am now nothing.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-22395959133043615622017-11-29T00:52:00.001-08:002017-11-29T00:52:57.543-08:00White Dwarf<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Let me go,<br />
For I've stood here long enough,<br />
Decaying,<br />
Leaking out all that is left,<br />
To show you your way back home.<br />
<br />
Let me go,<br />
Into my morbid universe,<br />
Diminishing,<br />
Holding onto the heaviness inside,<br />
I will walk with you for a while.<br />
<br />
Let me go,<br />
Let me fall into myself for a while,<br />
Disintegrating,<br />
But tell me you will come someday,<br />
And maybe together we'll evaporate into space.<br />
<br />
Till then I will wait.</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-33191651918864195592017-11-12T23:27:00.000-08:002017-11-12T23:27:25.935-08:00Sun<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
It burns,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
My skin, my temples,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
These violent tempests within,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Love always takes a celestial suffering,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But then you churn my insides,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
My golden arms stretch,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Your skin, your temples,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Clothing them,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
It glows!</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-70268116580142681462017-11-12T22:42:00.000-08:002017-11-12T23:27:52.549-08:00Moon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I feel our bed teleport-ing,<br />
Wormholes and next,<br />
Stars burning out and bursting away<br />
into clouds of velvet, purple and blue,<br />
We move on through,<br />
Pulsating lights around, lighthouses in space,<br />
And our hearts beating wild,<br />
Our bed, our dreams, our thoughts,<br />
Your laughs echoing through the infinite,<br />
And my words failing to grasp<br />
the universe in your smile,<br />
We move on through,<br />
Onto our moon..</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-52939494700707270982017-10-02T09:51:00.001-07:002017-10-02T11:14:57.464-07:00Parousia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
"Is there anything that shocked you at that time?" asked the interviewer.<br />
<br />
I was bemused at how insignificantly she raised that question, it was as passive as the fan on top of us which moaned stress-fully, on and on and on. The heat of the day was forcing my armpits to overflow and my muddy cotton shirt to stick onto them, this greatly exaggerated the unpleasant stature of my existence at that time. I thought about insignificance again, how my story mattered the least to her day-to-day affairs. How it eventually meant nothing but a secure dinner maybe, with her middle-class husband perhaps, who can't wait to hear her torrid tales of routine.<br />
<br />
"I don't know" I said "Looking down, I felt my legs never belonged to me."<br />
<br />
"Why is that so?" she persisted.<br />
<br />
It seemed as though the fan was moaning after every word she spoke with even less a vigor.<br />
<br />
"Perhaps it was only then I really began looking down."<br />
<br />
"What does that signify?"<br />
<br />
I looked up, the fan was choking.<br />
<br />
Why do you want to know bitch, I thought of asking her on her face. That would be worth trying, the thought was in fact strangely exhilarating, maybe that would turn her emotionless image more demonstrative, maybe that would let her know I meant business.<br />
<br />
"It signifies I am not someone who looks down often!" I said with a grunt.<br />
<br />
"That is quite something I must say" she remarked without changing her appearance.<br />
<br />
The fan stopped.<br />
<br />
"May I ask you something?" I interfered as she was about to ask something even more nonchalant.<br />
<br />
She looked disgruntled and nodded in the affirmative. A universe of emotions suddenly erupted inside of me, I could no longer contain it. I felt words crawling like freshly pumped blood, through my heart, into numerous cells, empowering them in ways they never experienced before, making muscles in my cheek move, my voice box to clatter and to release air which turned to involuntary words, lost and never reclaimed,<br />
<br />
"Miss" I felt the lost words hit my eardrums, "Does it cost you anything to fuck off from my place?"<br />
<br />
And then silence fell on us. Heavily.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
"Look, I know life has treated you in ways you don't want, but surely look at me. We've been living together for 7 years. Please Anand, please.."<br />
<br />
I could scarcely make out what she was saying. There was paint on the floor, on the dinner table, on the plates, in fact, there was paint all over the dining room. Surely who must be insane to paint from their dining room? Her eyes looked blue.. no, maybe someone painted it blue.. How I hate the color blue.. Who invented blue?<br />
<br />
"Who painted your eyes blue?" I shouted.<br />
<br />
"What? They.. They look.. They look that way.. What's wrong Anand?" she replied stuttering.<br />
<br />
"I hate blue!" I could feel my noise echoing through the hallway, hitting all the blue colored canvas, taking a tinge of blue from them all and hitting my ears again. It was horrifying, all the blue in the world.<br />
<br />
Her face showed horror, I approached her cautiously as if not to upset her blue well. It may spill and spread all over the floor again, I thought, I must be careful. I took out my silver colored brush, dipped it in the darkest of red I found in my palette and slowly approached her. It should not spill, I kept on thinking and gently pushed the brush into her eyes, it turned red in an instant.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The fan continued to moan as I saw the interviewer step out. The hallway seemed lonely and the dinner table abandoned. The heat was incessant, it was raging. I tried to close the windows but it found ways to claw in. My blood continued to hit my temples, and a migraine was slowly boiling inside. I must find something cold, I kept murmuring.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I climbed up the terrace of my apartment into burning sunshine. It grew around me the more I stood, making my cotton shirt to hug me around like a naked lover. My face was dissolving, and my eyes were developing a sore. I had to move, movement always makes things better, I thought. I took the ladder, which laid unused for quite sometime, and made it stand upright on top of the cement tank which satisfied my thirsts. I felt my cotton shirt pressing against me now.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I climbed the first step.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I removed the first button.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I climbed the second.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I removed the second.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I climbed the third.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Fuck it, I'm going to tear this up. The tearing sound of cloth may have been burnt out by the Sun. I moved on.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The tank grew closer, I threw my torn shirt away into scorching sunlight and stood for a moment looking at the water. It smelled pungent, and there were all sorts of insects floating around. I closed my mouth and held my nose tight. I wanted to shout something, but as I began to do so I felt my feet hit something cold and whatever I might have shouted went muzzled by the surrounding water.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There was paint all over my legs, wherever I walked I left prints. I saw footprints on our television screen, I saw footprints on every single canvas that remained dead on our hallway, I saw footprints on vessels, plates and newspapers, I saw footprints on her face, her hips, her stomach and her breasts.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Everything around was cold, everything around was covered in paint. I felt my head ache as I tried to make sense. I began searching for meanings, for new colors that could paint my fantasies. I took the color palette and mixed every color I had, it showed off a reddish-orange. I sat and began covering everything I owned with this newly made glorious-colored paint.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In between I stopped and stared down at my legs. These legs, these prints, I thought, they don't belong to me.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The water around my body curbed the aches inside my head. I climbed down the terrace and walked into sunlight again, it felt less painful now. A passing breeze went onto cool me and my senses, I walked on. I should get something to wear, I thought.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There was a textile store nearby, I decided to let my body taste freedom until then. I walked into the store, half naked, all wet.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I want a shirt!" I said plainly to the bewildered salesman. "I'd take that blue one on the top"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
As blue as her eyes, I smiled as I thought, I mean I don't even know if she may have a middle-class husband.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-73752813997952398482017-08-31T14:47:00.001-07:002017-10-02T09:53:07.407-07:00Notice to Readers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Dear all,<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It has to be said that it was a tough few months for me and it seems like things will go downhill for sometime now. I am taking this time to thank you all for the support you have given me throughout my time blogging. It was an amazing experience here, I became a much better writer compared to who I was when I began this journey. It is hard for me to say goodbyes, always have been.. For now, I believe this is it. I hope to come back someday soon. Till then, take care and enjoy life!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anand.<br />
<br />
.<br />
.<br />
.<br />
.<br />
<u><b>Edit (2nd October, 2017)</b></u><br />
<br />
Fuck it, I'll continue blogging!</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-60376885887990125122017-08-19T03:19:00.000-07:002017-08-20T00:16:30.979-07:00Narcissus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Of all the women in all the different universes including ours, Nandita was the most beautiful, at least according to me. "If you are writing my fable, it should begin with my beauty" said she when she accustomed herself to me during my dreams. It has to be stressed right from the start that whatever I know of her, I discovered through those dreams - Nandita; her body like wild fire consuming anything within its vicinity, her eyes like deep wells of poison intoxicating your body once you fall in, choking you with passion, her touch like hot blood dripping over your skin with its ironish smell and dark-reddish texture, and she - complete, perfect!<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The way she told her story was by itself enchanting. She would lie beside me in my sleep, play her hands around my ears, caressing my face, feeling my lips and gently whispering in my ears. A strong current of lust would then fill my body as I would pull her close to me, our bodies uniting with shared melancholy, with every inch of my grotesque existence asking her to continue the magic. She would laugh at my helplessness, giggle at my impotence and stroke my head with dominance. There was always a strange allure to her, which made my words dance to the music of her orgasmic gasps. I remember writing about her for the very first time,<br />
<br />
'<i>She comes in my sleep as if she existed within me. She knew where to touch, she knew what to speak, she knew how to appeal to a hapless man like me. It was as if she knew me long before I ever knew myself. It was at once haunting and entrancing, that someone who presents herself only in your dreams could inspire you to write about her</i>.'<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
Our nights were set ablaze with passion. Her voice was a relapse to my depressions, and her assiduity a forbearance. And one should say it was mutual. She would sing tales of how I could heighten feelings of desire within her. She would comment on how my hands discovering the curves and crevices of her physique could make her breasts overflow and her body to ache, how I could absorb her remorse and create a moment of happiness which brings her closer to life than she had ever known. Those days of passion continued for a very long time, and every night I found myself encapsulated by her sweating nudity and every morning I would wake up to a deserted bedroom filled with her lascivious aroma.<br />
<br />
Words dripped onto my diary like reminiscent ardor and every entry I made had one name all over,<br />
'<i>Nandita - my lust, my love. I know her existence maybe a trick my mind plays. But I have never been with another woman who understands me better. It may seem like a word of flatter, but as of now, this woman who visits me during my sleeps, fills my head with a perturbation that desperate lovers and lonely poets could only feel. It was as if we were broken fragments of a faraway star, having to live apart all this while, but colliding with each other one fine day under the light of the same old star. There was something heavenly with it, something spiritual. It was as if I was discovering my own femininity and falling irrevocably in love with it.'</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I had to speak about all this to someone other than her, which was why I met up with my sister Krutika, calling her out for a coffee one cold evening.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"It is stupid Nandan, I find it damn strange and damn stupid." she said.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"You know me. You know the issues I had, the struggles.. struggles to understand my own gender." I said reliving something we've both forgotten by then.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I could accept that phase of your life. But what you blabber on now.. It is ridiculous! And it is plain bullshit!" she thundered.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Well then, piss off!" I said and walked out leaving the untouched coffee to the mercy of the surrounding frost, while she was shouting that I should see a psychiatrist.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Many things changed after that talk with Krutika. I began treating Nandita with contempt, the way you treat your schizophrenic hallucinations. As she crawled over the mattress, in a pursuit to hunt down my frightened lips, I pushed her away making her jump angrily over my chest. She sat there breathing down her ornery winds, which hit me, filling me with rue.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she asked.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Nothing I said, just leave me alone today." I replied.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Next morning came sans her smell, the crumbled bed sheet exhibited spots of blood, the source of which I realized was my neck which was torn apart by my own claws. 'Is this all some absurd fantasy?' I thought. 'Will I wake up twenty years younger on my mother's lap?'</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"Life has beaten me!" I murmured as I looked at the balding figure in the mirror with stale eyes "It has beaten me faster than I thought.. Everything has become so absurd.."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
'What do you get when you add a little personal absurdity to a greater universal absurdity which besieges us all?' I thought and went back to look in the mirror. 'Somewhere inside that head which is losing hairs as if by the click of a hair-losing switch, the woman I loved would be staring angrily at me.'</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In days following our argument, Nandita came and left as if she was given a key and set in motion. The curves of her body didn't upset my breathing like it did before, and possibly she understood it too. Those meetings became more of a timid pass time, something which failed to interest us both.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It was then that we began doing something, no ordinary lovers would do - we began discussing insignificant things! We talked and heard about multiverses, and of individual electrons. We talked about our favourite cartoons and childhood pranks. We talked about poems and songs, colours which interests us, teachers who inspired us, our fears, our insecurities. These random musings brought out a certain interest which we lost midway. We sat cross legged on top of our bed, night on, eating each other with our eyes, talking about every last thing we experienced in our individual lives.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I always wished for this" I remember her saying "Us.. Beside each other.. Late night.. When everything around is in deep sleep, while we sit here looking at each other and talking about every silly thing no one cares to talk about!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
"We're doing it now, aren't we? We're going through something special here?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"Yes" she said "Something so beautiful, something I wish would last forever!"<br />
<br />
There was silence, and every last negativity which pulled us apart seemed to be fading away. I held her hand, it locked perfectly with mine, letting our finger graze over the backside of our hands. I let her head rest upon my chest, stroking it gently.<br />
<br />
"In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?" she asked suddenly.</div>
<div>
<br />
"Are you a tormented city?" I replied jokingly.<br />
<br />
"I'm an island. Seas surround me and I stand without company."<br />
<br />
"So falling rain will make it more torturous?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"No. It relieves those torments of the commanding salinity around me."<br />
<br />
"So, in what language does rain fall over tormented cities, my dear?" I inquired.<br />
<br />
"In the language of love. Single. One. Universal!"<br />
<br />
Saying this she got up, took my head and immersed it between her breasts, the heat of which made my cheeks to sweat. I climbed over to kiss her damp lips, and bit it with ferocity. She threw her hair over my face, making a screen through which she repetitively hit me with forceful kisses, asking me to guess where the next one will come from. After the sexual tensions held long within each other finally broke away out of us, we fell like tired fireflies, motionless and glowing!<br />
<br />
'The language of love. What difference does it make if the love is for her? Nandita - she was always there inside me, ever since I was born.What difference does it make?' I thought and fell asleep upon this glowing woman beside me.</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298902981081945410.post-32399284087123961052017-07-22T23:23:00.000-07:002017-08-19T03:54:25.649-07:00The Trial<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;">***</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;">Dedicated to Chester Bennington, for making us beat the darkness!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;">*</span><span style="color: red;">**</span></div>
<br />
<br />
When I first saw Samir, I couldn't see anything remarkable in him. He looked rather old, more than what his records show. He didn't greet me, and never really made an attempt to do so. It should be said that I had extreme apprehensions about him due to the nature of his case which demanded nothing but contempt. When I asked him if he was involved as said, he never denied it, and maybe never truly accepted it all the same. I remember those conversations as much as the man.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Hi. You're Samir, right? I'm Anand. I'm your advocate for this case."</div>
<div>
<br />
He said nothing. He never even cared to lift his face up and have eye contact.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"You see Samir, this is not that complicated a case if you can give me apt details. So you should open up, otherwise it will be difficult."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There was a deep well of darkness within his eyes, the extend of which I could not decipher. There were no tears, I believe it got dried up long before we met, or maybe even longer than I could imagine. Even with all the empathy within, I never wished to enter this man's shoes because I knew it would either choke me with remorse or weigh me down with heartache. After all Samir was here because his mother mentioned him in her suicide note. Yes, it is a difficult thing to lose your mother, perhaps even more when it is something she did to herself, and when she says it is because of you, that by itself will be enough to crush you out.<br />
<br />
After all those meetings I remember the first thing he ever said to me, it was delivered with a genuine air of incongruity.<br />
<br />
"Mr. Advocate... I don't think it means much to you... But I'm trying to remember how her food tasted like... It's strange, however I try to remember, I can only get the smells of her Biriyani... The taste escapes me..." He laughed for sometime, though it never occurred funny to me. He used to take time between sentences, think about something, laugh, start with it again.<br />
<br />
These talks continued for many days more. I think it was because he had nobody to talk to and however formal my appearance may have been those days, he found a good pair of ears to hear his tales of nostalgia.<br />
<br />
"Sir. I remember the day she taught me how to ride a bicycle... I never remembered it during the days she were alive... It dawned upon me only after she died... She would hold the handle of my bike, and would come running behind me whenever I would go fast... I thought of it as a fun thing to do back then, to make her run... I made her run... I made her run after me all her life....."<br />
<br />
I believe the first thing which hits you after a person you know so well dies is a profound void. Something which ceases to be filled however you load yourself with other things. The void stays there unperturbed, waiting for you to fall into it and realize that life will never be the same without them. For Samir, it would have been no different. And I seriously thought that it would take the better of him, that he would live in this world of absurdity where he is left with only accidental shots of distressing memories. Memories which in his view would've added up to his mother taking that decision to end her life.<br />
<br />
After all the talks I've had with Samir, the first time he said something to me about the case was when I invited him out for a smoke one Sunday.<br />
<br />
"I'm not denying my involvement in the case, Advocate... I've been like a thorn in her feet, pricking into her flesh whenever she takes a step, making her bleed... I've run behind all things unnecessary in her eyes, I think it would have taken a toll on her mentally..."<br />
<br />
"But Samir, whatever you claim to have done, I don't think it would've been enough in a normal world to do what she did. Was she suffering from any mental delusions, something which she talked to you about?"</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
"I don't know, sir. She always had this feeling that I'm going to harm her someday. It is funny when you think of it that way. She always thought I would kill her to steal her money or something..." He laughed and wiped away the tears which formed like clouds in a May sky. And after almost two weeks since I've known this man, I came to realize he knew how to cry.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
I believe that this moment marked the beginning of our relationship, however insignificant and unimportant it would seem. Maybe for the first time I opened myself to the point of view that this person who I'm representing is as human as anyone around me. And when I knew more of him I realized that he had an attachment so deep with his mother, it was incomprehensible that she would do something so naive if not due to some grave mental situation.<br />
<br />
It should be said that those smokes during Sunday afternoons continued weeks on. Samir found it relieving and I was understanding more about him, his insecurities, and what his Umma meant for him.<br />
<br />
"You know something, sir? Sundays were always my favorite days. I remember we, Umma and me, used to go to this dargah to hear <i>Qawwalis</i>. She would dress up in the richest clothes she could find in her old attic, cover herself up with <i>burqah </i>and would hold my hand all along the way. There was something re-assuring about it. There was something re-assuring about Sundays. It was as if we would be back to normal soon..."<br />
<br />
When I tried to pull him back to areas which would interest me more with the case he would spin off and say something entirely irrelevant. I remember him saying something about my name in a similar situation.<br />
<br />
"Anand! I love your name. There is a ring to it no normal man can understand. It is as if you've had to conquer seas of despair, come out at the other end, just to shout your name to yourself. Anand! Happiness!"<br />
<br />
"You're quite a charming speaker, Samir" I replied then, visibly blushing.<br />
<br />
"Yes. A writer too in spare times."<br />
<br />
"And why didn't you make it full time?"<br />
<br />
"Umma! She never believed writing could be a worthwhile profession!"<br />
<br />
"And so you sacrificed it?"<br />
<br />
"Not entirely, which is why I used to find a lot of spare time!" he laughed and I joined in this time. "And her qualms, it began when she was certain I would not fall within the normal mould."<br />
<br />
"Was she afraid you would break away from her to follow your own path? Was she holding onto you like she used to whenever you were going to that dargah?"<br />
<br />
"I do not know, sir."<br />
<br />
"So that had something to do with this, didn't it? Your dreams?"<br />
<br />
"I do not know. It made her upset. But I think she always was upset about me."<br />
<br />
Samir replied and didn't speak again. The empathetic part of myself which was moving into escapism resisted the pull, came back and filled Samir's shoes. It was only then that I realized the storm he held within his heart, the doubts, the fears. On one side his dream, on the other his mother's failing mental health. He chose neither and that by itself could've been his gravest mistake.<br />
<br />
It didn't take me long to prove Samir's mother was a schizophrenic who had absolutely no idea about anything when she decided to end her life. The letter long held as evidence was returned to Samir. He decided not to read it anytime soon.<br />
<br />
"Maybe someday, when I have fully recovered from all this, I'll take a look." he said.<br />
<br />
"You have your life ahead of you, you are a free man. What do you intend to do with it?" I asked.</div>
<div>
<br />
"I don't know. I'm sure I can't go back and change things. But I can do things a little differently from now on."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Samir. You are a good man. After everything that happened, I still believe that."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Maybe, sir. Maybe I am. But good and bad has very little appeal to me these days."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Samir, please don't spoil your life."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"No. I intend to write it up someday. I think it will be better served from a perspective outside of me. And I think I know just what I should do."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"What is it?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"I guess I'll give you a chance to narrate!"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Those were the last words I ever heard from Samir. He never called me, never dropped in on those random Sunday evenings to see how I was doing, and maybe share a smoke. He didn't respond to my letters. He never said a word of thanks. I think it will always be hard for a person to be charged with the death of his own mother, and as for Samir it would've been equally awful because in his view he was partly responsible.<br />
<br />
As of now, I hope he does well with his life, I hope that someday he will sort things out. I hope that he would read what his Umma wrote about him, and could still look back with fondness on their relationship, however it deteriorated. I hope he finds peace. And I hope he would take up writing because as far as I know, I am not a good narrator, I hope to see how he presents me in his story!</div>
</div>
Anand S Unnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06000744958432605565noreply@blogger.com0